Our hardware is likely to turn into something like us a lot faster than we are likely to turn into something like our hardware...I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't.

Laney had recently noticed that the only people who had titles that clearly described their jobs had jobs he wouldn't have wanted.

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

All my life I've encountered people who were obsessed with one particular class of object or experience, who were constantly pursuing that thing. Since I was a little kid, I hadn't afforded myself the opportunity, I guess, to have a hobby.

I assume that - because you can get degrees in journalism from very reputable universities - I assume that people can be trained to be journalists. I've never been entirely certain that anyone can be trained to be a novelist in the same way.

I had a list of things that science fiction, particularly American science fiction, to me seemed to do with tedious regularity. One was to not have strong female protagonists. One was to envision the future, whatever it was, as America.

A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.